Hello Everyone: Our goal here is to get comfortable with writing in the blogging style. It doesn't mean that you forget good grammar, or use those awful shorthand abbreviations that people use when texting, but rather that you adopt a more conversation writing style and be more willing to offer your opinions online.
You should offer opinions, make personal observations, tell stories, describe things you see around the campus that you'd like to share with the class. Liberate yourself.
Mike Shanahan
I thought I knew what I was going to write on here--that is, until I got to the site.
ReplyDeleteI got a sign in screen. I tried the given username and password pobably twelve times. A sane person would have concluded they didn't just make a typo, they had the wrong information. Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. Send me to the loony bin.
It took me about about twenty minutes before I realized I could come directly to the gwbloggers2009 blog without having to sign in. I scrolled up and down and up and down and up and down looking for some button that would tell me how to enter my own entry. Doing so would require signing in--which I again tried multiple times, knowing already that it wouldn't work (crazy). My classmates seemed to figure out how to enter the site without any problems. I will just have to settle with posting through a comment.
And you definitely shouldn't expect any pictures or fancy stylings from me. The worst part is I am in an intro course for Digital Media and our current assignment is building a website. Shoot me now. While HTML code is a language many people of our generation have grown up with, it is as foreign to me as Russian (though at GW that may not be so foreign to many, either).
And all the while I've been writing this blog entry, I've been fighting with my iPhone to sync to iTunes. I may be one of the most technologically illiterate students of my time, and definitely in this class. I better get to reading "HTML in 10 Minutes," which will take me longer than ten minutes, before I become one of those obsolete journalists who failed to recognize the changing model of the profession before it was too late.
Ashley Norred
Overnight Celebrity
ReplyDeleteOn Thursday night I headed out to club not far from campus with a few of my friends and ended up running into actor Pooch Hall from the television sitcom “The Game”. I managed to maneuver my way over to speak with him and asked his about his latest projects and what was next in his career. He then asked me if I was a blogger, and being the honest person that I am, I said NO I’m not, and that is where I made the fatal mistake, because seconds later he walked away. So here I am writing my blog entry four days too late, and I can’t help but wonder what the outcome of our conversation would have been should I have said yes. What is it with our society these days, constantly consumed and worried about celebrities over government and world affairs…
The old cliché saying that every one has fifteen minutes of fame has never been more true. Producers of reality television shows have tricked us into supporting the cheapest form of entertainment. In the early 1990’s MTV Networks’ “Real World” made it cool to watch everyday people argue, have sex, go through personal struggles, make a friend along the way, and have it all caught on camera for the world to see. In essence this was a sign of a new emergent American culture centered more on the individual than on the whole. Popular culture has paved the way for a society that constantly asks us to divulge who we are, what we think, and how we feel often at the expense of our own personal privacy. Yet, deep down inside I strongly believe that there is a celebrity that exists in every one that is waiting for its time in the spotlight. Nowadays, if you are a dancer, a cake decorator, an unruly child, a bridal consultant, a bounty hunter, or even a nerdy suburban kid attempting to be the next rapping prodigy there are reality shows, online blogs, websites, and social media networks available for every type of individual and interest.
Wouldn’t it be nice if tomorrow we all woke up being who we wished we could be, living the life we’d always imagined? Essentially we can be because we stand at the most opportunistic time in our lives. Tomorrow’s reality is more likely to be a remixed variation of that which we already know and expect, yet each day we can choose to make at least one decision that will help us to be one step closer to that vision. If I could I’d be a photojournalist in the likeness of Reza or perhaps even a have my work on the cover of Vogue and Vanity Fair like Annie Leibovitz. I have a fascination with photography for the emotions and messages that can be communicated through the medium. A camera has the unique ability to capture perfectly a single moment in time that theoretically can never be achieved again. To photograph any phenomena is to acknowledge its significance in the same way that language applies meaning to that which would otherwise remain arbitrary. In an effort to make this dream come true I entered several photographs into a competition and was chosen to have my work displayed in an art gallery.
Perhaps the beauty of being a member of Generation Y is not solely our overwhelming access to and use of technology, but also the ability to share who we are with the world. Whether through a friend request or gaining a new follower, the key to maintaining your place on the web and in real life is knowing who you are and sharing your individuality.
- Kori Clanton
Two of my favorite things about the month of October: Giant bags of Halloween candy at CVS and pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks. Both are commodities taht I can only get once a year. And oh, how I love that time of year.
ReplyDeleteSure, most people wouldn't consider bags of Halloween candy a commodity, but whne you have a candy addiction like I do, they are like Heaven. There's just something about candy coming in small packages; eating Sweedish Fish out of a tiny individual package with 6-10 fish is, for some reason, infinitely more satisfying that eating Sweedish Fish from its normal packaging of a big bag with several fish. The fact that I've thought about this, I know, is somewhat strange. But when you look forward to visiting CVS to restock you depleted supply of mini Butterfingers, I figured it was just about time for me to evaluate why I have five or more bags of Halloween candy in my apartment throughout the month of October.
Maybe it's a nostalic thing. Everyone can remember being a kid and dumping out all their candy on the floor after going trick-or-treating, sorting it in order to count how many piece you had collected durin the night. The more pieces, the better. But now that I'm older and can simply just buy the candy, withut trick-or-treating, the excitment that used to accompany the tiny packages isn't the same. Now, the excitement is having the chance to feel like a kid again, getting a tummy ache from eating too many Reeses.
Above all, however, I think it just comes down to my love for candy. I appreciate Halloween because Halloween appreciates candy.
My other October obsession, pumpkin spice lattes, really are a commodity that only come around once a year. I love pumpkin pies, pumpkin bread, pumpkin everything. so, when I get to incorporate pumpkin into my daily coffee-drinking routine, it just makes my mornings that much better. Even when I'm exhausted, I perk up just a little when I realize I will soon be on my way to pick up my pumpkin spice latte.
I'm not even sure that I would ever petition Starbucks to carry its pumkin spice flavoring year-round, because even though I love it so much, I think part of what makes it so good is not always being able to have. After all, it's human impulse to want what you can't have, right? And I'm sure Starbucks recognizes this.
Next up: gingerbread lattes and Christmas lights.
-Amanda Lilly (it says Kathleen because I'm signed into gmail under my GW club swimming account)